Quietly, she said, “We pulled the plug on my mom too.”
He turned to her, surprised, and watched her without looking away. His eyes reminded her of china, something beautiful and breakable with shards that would hurt. “You’re stunning,” he said, and Olivia felt a confliction of being sad he’d changed the subject to a thrill from his words.
From across the room, she caught Delan glance at her as he opened an expensive bottle of wine he’d been saving. He must have had someone go into the basement to get it, because Olivia was in charge of storing the few good bottles—gifts, bribes—in the basement’s shallow but dark depths to keep them out of late-night drunken reaches. I don’t do basements, he’d always said, and Olivia never questioned it. Now she watched him twist out the cork, his eyes still on her till suddenly he turned back to finish telling the tale of when he’d ridden in a tank to cross a restricted zone, all to be with someone he loved.
When the man with the damp and dark past left, she’d not seen him go. The space beside her was simply empty.
Later, when she and Delan were cleaning the room, bottles clanking into bags, ashes pluming when trays were dumped, she told him what had happened.
“It was this one moment, with this one person who I could tell got so much about me, even our childhoods in the rain, and we just sort of met, connected, and left.” She shook the sediment left in a glass, a dark-red sludge. “Or he left. I didn’t want him to go. But he’s in the cast?”
Delan nodded, then used the edge of his shirt to mop up a ring of water on an end table.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t pursue it and embarrass you. I got it. He left. He’s not interested or he would’ve stayed.”
“Not necessarily.” He clicked off a lamp. “Sometimes the last thing you want is to want.”
A whoosh in the walls from the pipes—Rebecca was just getting up, readying to start her Sunday. Suddenly it was all too much—this new confusion between them, being brave and alone, the sad routine of it all. “What’s the point in any of this?” she asked.
“The point,” he said, “is that you’re telling the story.”
“Because of the lack. I’m telling the story because of the denial of what could’ve happened. The lack of a great story.” With that, she realized the woman with the corkscrew hair was gone as well, despite the way she’d looked at Delan all night. “Where’s your girl?”
“She wasn’t my girl.” A bottle clanged as he dropped it in the bag. “And despite what you think, most of the time what could’ve happened is the great story.” Then he turned to her. “But him? You’re young. With possibility. And a good heart. You still believe. I know him; I’ve worked with him. And a man like that—you’re drawn to him, but he would destroy you with his damage.”
Now, in his parents’ kitchen, she waits at the far end of the counter while Gaziza cooks, opening bags of spices to inhale and identify. Cumin. Coriander. Oregano. Most she recognizes, but then there’s one that’s tangy, a deep-burgundy-colored ground spice. She breathes it in, feeling an unassigned familiarity, until Delan brushes against her back on his way to the sink and whispers, “Sumac,” in her ear. Of course. She remembers that night, the confusion. The hints at what was to come. Everything now—the spice, the heat of the kitchen, the possible Neanderthal bones in the yard, and his breath against her—everything presses into a chill that sweeps her shoulder. This is right, she thinks. Despite the rocky start, being here is right.
Then he’s back to helping his mother, reaching in as a second set of arms until his mother shoos him away while also slyly scooting over so he can do just as he intended. His father, and those ears Olivia loves, steals bites of this and that and is hand-slapped by Gaziza while also being observed by Gaziza, as it’s clear he is an unofficial, covert taste tester.
“Sumac,” Olivia says to Delan as he reaches for a dish towel beside her. She allows the word to climb at the end, as if leading to a place she hopes he sees, to the memory of the spice pressed against her lip and that night when their attraction had finally reached into action and reaction, though tentatively, confusingly, as all first steps tend to be.
He stops, with his shoulder against hers and a grin that’s gone lopsided, a look that’s all mischief, one she’s glad his parents can’t see. “That night,” he says quietly. “You in your sweatshirt and nightgown. All I could think of was how to save you from that guy.”
She smiles, her words a whisper. Playful. “Too bad you didn’t have to. The jerk took off.”
“Oh, too bad.”
“What would you have done if I’d actually gone off with him?”
“You wouldn’t have.”
“I think I would’ve.”
With this, his voice goes low. “You wouldn’t have. Because I told him to leave.” A wink and he turns, leaving her smiling, watching him at the sink as he fills a bowl of ice water with mint leaves. Then she sees his parents watching them, drawn in to whatever’s happening, though the second Olivia looks in Gaziza’s direction, she blushes to the floor.
“I love that cabinet,” Olivia says for something to say, something innocent. “The one in the living room.”
